Dust and Metal

Director: Esther Johnson

Year: 2016

The story of what happened to an English town during World War One with almost all of its men fighting abroad and its women and children left behind. The North East was in the front line, thanks to its shipyards and munitions factories.<br /> Using archive and contemporary footage and audio, this film collages the stories of people from Tyneside and Wearside to uncover just what life was like on the home front, with bombs falling on Britain for the first time, conscientious objectors sentenced to death, and women working as doctors, tram conductors and footballers. The narrative moves from an Edwardian golden era, in which sport grew in popularity and aircraft and cars pointed to a bright new future, to a war that horrifically reversed this progress. In the Battle of the Somme, British, French and German armies fought one of the most traumatic battles in military history. Over the course of just four months, more than one million soldiers were captured, wounded or killed in a confrontation of unimaginable horror.

Director: Esther Johnson

Year: 2012

An observation, investigation and social record of the lives and thoughts of ten residents of the Golden Lane Estate, London. Built in the late 1950s by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the Golden Lane estate exemplifies an utopian ideal of social housing. This film documents the life of the complex over half a century since its construction and asks questions about domestic and private space and of making a home in such an iconic and distinctive architectural environment.

Director: Esther Johnson

Year: 2010

Gerald Wells stole his first radio, a Belmont, in 1943 at the age of thirteen. He was immediately sent to an approved school, whose psychiatrist diagnosed an obsession with wireless and electricity, an obsession that continues today. <br /> <br /> The house Wells was born in and still inhabits is now home to over 1,500 wireless objects and 45,000 valves. Analogue Kingdom is a poetic portrait of Wells, founder and curator of the British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum. It reveals the charm of Wells' world, where radio relics and their attendant stories fill every nook and cranny.